Blake Lively On "Complicated Women" On Screen

Blake Lively Talked About How "Complicated Women" Are Shown On Screen

September issue season is upon us! And Glamour has revealed Blake Lively as its September 2017 cover star. In the interview, Lively talked to Alex Morris about the 2016 presidential election, women producing their own projects, and how "complicated women" are portrayed on screen.

Lively is an executive producer on The Husband's Secret, the big-screen adaptation of Liane Moriarty's novel. (Yep, that's the same Liane Moriarty of Big Little Lies fame.) Being behind the camera, as well as in front of it as the movie's star, seems to have impacted her perspective on female-produced projects. (Blake Lively's come a long way from her Serena van der Woodesen days.)

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The actress told Glamour that she was drawn to producing The Husband's Secret because of the strong female characters at the heart of the story.

"It's a little bit pulpy; that makes it really fun. And there are a bunch of women at the center of it—strong women, flawed women," Lively said of the project. "Any day you employ women, to me, is a good day."

The actress added that she's drawn to characters who aren't as "black and white" in terms of character.

"I think that onscreen — at least in the mainstream — complicated women are black-and-white. They're villains, or they're heroic. And that's just not real life," Lively told Glamour. "We all have a lightness, and we all have darkness, and we all have plenty of shades in between."

As for the 2016 election, Lively said it's made her more "aware" of intersectional discrimination in America.

"It made me more aware, more conscious, more sensitive. Not just of sexism but of discrimination in all areas — class, gender, race," Lively said of the election. She explained that she knew about various social justice issues already — she supports the Child Rescue Coalition, which works to fight child pornography. But Lively added that we often see media reports about "middle-class white girls who've been kidnapped," while stories about trafficking victims of color are less reported.

The All I See Is You star also revealed that she and husband Ryan Reynolds don't film movies at the same time — they alternate their schedules so that they can travel with each other and their two daughters.

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"I admire people who find that what fulfills them is their art or their work, but what fulfills both me and my husband is our family. Knowing that, everything else comes second," Lively told Glamour. "We've each given up stuff we loved in order to not work at the same time."